Friday, January 29, 2010

Frienze; A tale of four breakfasts: part 2

Well, happy with our little art cafe find we continued our wandering towards the central markets, then another side street and another glimpse of a possible something. Two old men and a puppet sitting either side of a doorway enjoying not-coffee at this early hour but a glass of wine.

We walked past and looked in a few more old men standing at the bar drinking, well we had heard that the traditional breakfast for the Fiorentini gentleman was the legendary tripe sandwich, so we decided to see if these Fiorentini knew where we could get one. In we went and in our best smashed Italian asked for the lampredotto, the guy behind the counter said something (that's the problem of only knowing a few words of a foreign language, people tend answer back with more than you know of the same language) and disappeared around the corner a few moments later he was back and some more was said, we were kinda like uuhh ok when a voice from behind us said "He says it won't be ready till 12 o'clock, where are you from?" Surprised we turned to address the elderly dude sitting in the corner.

His name was Max, we talked about Aus and living in Japan, he had been to both, he told us the traditional breakfast was and espresso, we said we'd already had one "so let me buy you a wine then" was the response. Sure why not a glass was produced and since we were here we had a little browse of the extensive crostini cabinet and selected a Nduja and butter crostini and a little bun with slices of fresh truffle and butter (YUM!!) as we were looking came Max's voice over our shoulder "let me be reminding you I'll buy you a wine but that is all" Heh heh yeah no worries Max.

We sat and talked for a while, enjoyed tasty snacks and good wine, soon we had to move on in search of the Lampredotto we said our goodbyes and made to pay, but a few words from Max and the barman said it was all taken care of. Really? Thanks Max!

Breakfast number 2 and yet another promotion for walking down strange alleys.And later on that day when we stopped back in to a wee five oclock snacky we had the opportunity to do the supprising, a young Japanese guy looking for chicken liver crostini was super suprised to being spoken to in Japanese in a little out of the way osteria in Florence.

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These days you can get on a bus, boat or plane and within hours or even minutes you can be in a new country.. but even as the world gets smaller the food still stands to let you know you've arrived a world away..